Re: Stemless and metrum-free notes

[Neil Puttock]

[copying to -user]

2008/12/11  <address@hidden>:
> Dear Sir,
> it is marvelous. For whole day, I am now reading through the manual
> and indeed I started to love this system!
> However, my intended use is specialized one. I am making the
> critical edition of gregorian chant, which then should be available
> in a modern transcription (which I read in your manual, it is
> perfectly possible). However, there is one special sign, the
> liquescent note, which is represented in modern transcription by a
> note with a "cauda" - with a downwards tail. Is this character found
> in the lilypond? If not, how can it be added?

This glyph isn't available in LilyPond, but you could probably work
around this by overriding notehead stencils.

> But the main problem I am dealing with is this: I would like use one
> single source file to produce different style looking outputs. The
> first output is the modern transcription as above, but the second
> output should be to the something similar to the Hufnagel notation,
> but it is special Czech version of this notation called Rombika. It
> has just one notehead like Hufnagel.punctum (it has no virga), but
> it can be augmented (looks like augmented vaticana stropha but
> fatter). Also, it has special custos sign. - as seen in the picture.
> However, the biggest problem are the joined tones in neumes -
> ligatures (pes, flexa). For pes, this Rombika uses a hairpin line to
> join the adjacent notes (so the result is looking like the Hufnagel
> Custos combined with a punctum at the end) and for the flexa it uses
> thick line going vertically from the first note to the second. The
> notes in a melisma should be printed very close to each other (in
> fact touching themselves if they are of the same height, or with
> very very tiny space between them when they go up or down).
> I attach a picture of this. So, my question is, is it difficult to
> make a new "style" for the gregorian chant notation which would be
> the Czech Rombika? How much would I pay for such a style to be
> created and to whom should I speak for the creation of such a style?

To my untrained eye, this looks as if it would require at the minimum
several new glyphs and an extension to the ligature engravers, which
you'd have to be prepared to implement yourself since there's
currently no development work taking place in this area.

> Next question is the reusability of the source file. I assume that
> it possible to reuse the same source for different style output. But
> the section in the manual about this is missing.

The Ancient chapter is currently being rewritten, so there are a few
sections which are empty at the moment.

> Also, I think there
> might be a problem, since the ligatures in gregorian style are
> identified by words \pes and \flexa, while in the modern
> transcriptions, slurs (represented by brackets) are used for joined
> notes. This would have to be somehow workaround to make the double
> export functioning.

I think you'd have to use a combination of \tag and switching of
engravers here.  Section 3.3 in the Notation Reference should give you
a few ideas 
(http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.11/Documentation/user/lilypond/Working-with-input-files#Working-with-input-files).

> The last question is, how do I move the melismata around the staff
> in the vaticana style? In your example on the web, there is Sanctus
> notated, but I can see that the second neume is wrongly positioned
> since it is too far from the first neume, it should be much more
> near to it, because it is still the syllable "San--". In your
> example it appears too much near to the "--ctus" syllable. What can
> we do to move it to the right position? It is this example:
> http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.11/Documentation/user/ad/lily-dfc79dd8.ly
>
> and in it, this line:
> \[ a \flexa \deminutum g\melismaEnd \]
> the two notes a and g should be more near to the previous neum, not
> to the next one.

How does the attached image look?

Fortunately, our spacing guru, Joe, has just fixed this problem; the
improved spacing will be present in the next release.

> Sincerely,
> Jiri Zurek

Regards,
Neil

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